Are study clubs hurting students?

A UC San Diego scientist says in a new study that colleges should do far more to cultivate altruism, especially when it comes to getting stronger students to help weaker ones succeed in the classroom.

Manuel Cebrian, an engineer and computer scientist, claims that today’s average student suffers from the "rich club" phenomenon, which involves academic whiz kids who form study groups early and close themselves off from lower performers. The failure to get into one of these clubs can greatly influence whether a student prospers or fails.

“There are many intrinsic factors that lead to inequalities among students — how you were educated growing up, whether you have a job — there are a thousand different things,” Cebrian said. “We just know that differences in aptitude exist, and that they are reinforced strongly by study cliques. The good get better and the average get worse.”

Manuel Cebrian

UCSD

Manuel Cebrian

Manuel Cebrian (UCSD)

Nobody knows how many rich clubs there are at UC San Diego, Cebrian says, but look closely and you'll see at least one in nearly every class.

“They’re everywhere," said Cebrian, a researcher in UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. "In my opinion, universities should make an effort to mix things up. Students are at university to learn, not compete. We already have programs like affirmative action, ... if we can break up rich clubs, that is the next level of equality.”

Breaking them up may require considerable effort from the brightest students in any given class. Take a student like Joshua Yang, a second year who is studying bioengineering at UC San Diego. Despite being enrolled in one of the most difficult degree programs at the university, Yang has a 4.0 GPA and has already received more than three years of course credit in his short time at the university. The key, he said, is synergy.

“I always make sure I’m in a study group for my classes,” Yang said. “The class I’m studying for right now, systems biology, has a Facebook group that I’m in. We don’t exclude lower-achieving students, but I’d say the entire top-tenth of the class is in that group. The two people who got the top score on the midterm are in it. We don’t exclude people, necessarily, but we don’t go out of our way to study with mediocre students — whereas we do for the smarter ones.”

Cebrian -- whose study was published in the journal Scientific Reports - said that this is exactly how the rich club phenomenon affects the dropout rate.

“It’s not malicious,” Cebrian said. “The high achievers don’t get together and say, ‘OK, who are we going to ignore today?’ Rather, it’s an organic process. It’s a matter of prioritization: today’s students are flooded by emails, phone calls and texts. It’s very easy for them to respond to certain individuals and not others.”

Edgardo Castro, a second year studying computer science at UCSD, says that his GPA isn’t where he wants it to be. Castro said that while he has never heard of the rich club phenomenon, he has noticed that more motivated students tend to connect more readily than average students do.

“They’ll be up at the front, exchanging phone numbers and talking excitedly about this or that thing the professor said,” Castro said. “But for most students, classes are tough. We're struggling, just trying to understand what the professor's saying. It feels like we don't have time to make friends."

Castro is trying to create his own study group, but he says, I’m trying to find people like me. If you ask a smart kid a really basic question, they can take forever to answer you — even if they’re super nice. I've experienced this personally.”

Cebrian said that while his research study doesn't show malicious behavior in students, it does indicate that the educational system needs to change. He thinks that teachers should grade not only based on how well students perform on tests, but on how much they are able to help their fellow students.

“I think it’s very important, in college, to explicitly reward altruism," Cebrian said. "Professors can give surveys, for example, asking ‘Which students have helped you most in this course?’ and give those students extra points.”

Cebrian believes that rewarding altruism could not only break down rich clubs, but better prepare students for the workplace.